Great British Beach Clean 2017 results

Massive thanks to everyone who took part! Whether you’ve organised an event or simply turned up on the day and got to grips with gloves and litter pickers for the first time, your support is absolutely incredible!

Lizzie Prior,
MCS Beach and River Clean Project Officer

Almost 7,000 people took part in the Great British Beach Clean in September 2017. Together, we removed 255,209 pieces of litter from 339 beaches, and recorded every bit for this report.

On average, that makes 718 pieces of rubbish for every 100m stretch of beach we cleaned. Sadly, that’s a 10% rise compared with the previous year.

As with previous years, tiny bits of plastic were the most common items found, and in greater numbers than last year.

Litter from foods and drinks, usually used just once and thrown away, made up at least 20% of all of the rubbish we picked up. 138 pieces of “on the go” litter were found, on average, for every 100m of beach surveyed.